The gear preselection or control of the operating state of the vehicle transmission is carried out in an increasing number of motor vehicles by means of electrical or electronic signaling. The electrical or electronic actuation of such systems, which makes do without mechanical connection between the actuating element and the device to be controlled, for instance, an automatic gear box, brings with it the circumstance that no appreciable operating forces need to be introduced by the driver into the actuating element any longer and that, in particular, no such forces have to be mechanically transmitted to the transmission.
An actuating device in which the actuation continues to be carried out with relatively bulky, large operating levers despite the elimination of the need for the mechanical force transmission to the technical system being controlled are known from the state of the art. Thus, numerous vehicle transmissions continue to be shifted or controlled with various forms of the classical shift knob or automatic selector lever, even though there is no force transmission any longer between the operating lever and the vehicle transmission because of the shift-by-wire design already being used.
This is associated with drawbacks in various respects. For example, the type and the location of arrangement of the operating lever for a motor vehicle transmission are markedly limited because of the considerable space requirement of such gearshift levers and are limited essentially to the usual accommodation of the gearshift lever in the area of the center console or between the front seats of the motor vehicle. This is accompanied by limitations in terms of design, and the freedom allowed to the vehicle designer is reduced essentially to the usual locations for mounting the gearshift lever. The gearshift lever protruding from the center console is not infrequently also disadvantageous in terms of the freedom of motion for the vehicle occupants.
The classical gearshift or selector levels are also often disadvantageous with respect to safety on the motor vehicle. For example, the clothing of the driver or front-seat passenger may get caught by the gearshift lever during motions and this may compromise the driver's attention to what is happening on the road, or lead even to undesired shifting operations.
Another, frequently likewise safety-relevant problem during the actuation of technical systems by means of classical operating levels is that it may happen relatively easily in case of a plurality of existing shift positions of the operating lever that intermediate positions of the gearshift lever are missed or inadvertently jumped over during shifting. This happens especially when the particular operating element or the particular gearshift lever can assume a plurality of shift positions, which are arranged essentially linearly one after another.
Furthermore, the situation in which technical systems, for example, vehicle transmissions, automatically adapt and change their operating or shifting state to changed general conditions without the direct action of the driver also occurs increasingly frequently, especially in modern motor vehicles with the technical systems used there, which are increasingly strongly interlinked with one another. For example, it is not uncommon that a by-wire-controlled vehicle transmission automatically assumes a certain operating position, for example, the shift position “P” (parking brake) when the engine is stopped and after the ignition key has been removed or as soon as the driver leaves the vehicle.
If the vehicle is equipped with a common transmission actuating element, for example, with an automatic selector lever, the selector level will, however, remain in the shift position selected manually by the driver before, for example, in “N,” even in case of the automatically engaged shift position “P.” Thus, the operating lever erroneously signals now, due to its unchanged position in the “N” position, that the transmission is in shift position “N,” whereas the transmission is actually in the shift position “P” because of the automatic activation of the parking brake. Even though this may not immediately lead to a safety risk in the case of the example selected, there remains at least the problem that the selector lever is in the “N” position when driving is resumed the next time, and difficulties or lack of clarity could therefore arise when engaging the desired gear.
Finally, the prior-art gearshift levers or automatic selector levers are still also disadvantageous in respect to the behavior in a crash, because such projecting actuating elements may be a source of considerable risks in case of a crash, especially in terms of a possible head impact.
As can be easily seen, the cases from the area of the motor vehicle or the control of the gear box are only examples of generally applicable relationships involved in the man-machine interaction in case of electronically controlled technical systems, in which the actuating elements are no longer in connection with the system to be controlled via mechanical linkages or shafts but only via electrical or electronic signals.